A Life Less Ordinary

Midway Through First Quarter

by Helen

Today is the official half way point of the quarter.  I have taken 2 midterms, several quizzes, have submitted way too much homework and have a take home midterm in accounting coming up this week that will surely give me a whole new perspective on how much I don't know. 

I am also finally making friends in the program.  I am definitely seeing progress from saying hello in the class to friendship.  I was just offered a spot on the Study Tour to Kenya for spring break.  I think that will be an awesome opportunity, after I finish calming down my parents about my trip.  

This weekend, Adam and I hosted a Halloween party and a pub crawl in Capitol Hill.  I think the duties divided up in that I came up with the food to serve, Adam came up with dessert and titles of the food that we super creative.  We also borrowed decorations from a friend that really made the place look good.  It was then fun to walk around Cap Hill and see all the activities on Halloween out there. It was no West Hollywood, but pretty cool nonetheless. 

 Adam was a disco king and I was Pippi Long Stocking.  Unfortunately you can't see the striped knee highs in this picture, but they are rainbow colored if that helps. 

Yesterday my wonderful boyfriend treated me to a massage which was very needed and we went to change my tires at Costco because apparently I was a day away from spinning out due to worn out tires.  I guess my car didn't get the memo that I was busy. 

Life is good.  It feels stressful but I'm pretty sure it's self-imposed and unnecessary stress. At the end of the day, school is about learning and not worrying about grades.  I am lucky in that I have a very strong support network formed by Adam, my good friends and family. I don't think anyone is necessarily having an easy time depending on what their situation is or issues they are dealing with, but I know that everyone makes it out better than they started. 

"Name one thing in your life that hasn't changed"

by Helen 

"Name one thing in your life that hasn't changed in the last three months," was what a friend of mine told me today when he took me home. He also added that in a world of lots of changes, it is normal to focus in on something/anything and make it worse.  So I'm not sure what is normal or not normal right now and how long it will take me to feel like the ground has stopped shaking, but in the mean time, I want to talk about some things that have changed that are somewhat amusing. 

I do homework. A lot. I know everyone says that grades in the MBA program don't matter and that your average GPA is 3.5 and no one gets anything below 3.2, etc. I get that.  However, I have never seen a balance sheet until a month ago.  I have never calculated how credit cards determine how much money you owe them and never knew how quickly that ads up.  And I have never tried to figure out how much money I need to save in order to send a kid to college in 15 years.  I mean, some problems were just not on my radar. As a result - I do homework. None of these things are intuitive or easy for me. I don't plan on giving up my life for net present values of college tuition or anything, but I do feel that I need to get a solid foundation in the first quarter so my life may just have to be on hold.  

I drink beer. This is not a good consequence of business school. But alas, everyone is doing it and I'm on the bandwagon.  Beer pitchers are cheap and it's an easy way to make people happy from long study days.

I actually get tired of talking throughout the day. When I come home, I actually want to sit in peace and quiet. This is a big step for me considering "I have a lot to say." 

Calendar is my friend. My calendar is booked out by the hour, on some days, by the half an hour.  If you are not on my calendar, I am not quite sure you exist. 

Keeping outside perspective. I am determined to continue going to Monday dinner and hanging out with my non business school friends sometimes.

I spend time in the library. If you know me, you know this is odd. 

First Day of School

by Helen

My first day of school was in Moscow on September 1, 1990. September 1st was the national first day of school for the whole country and it was a festive event.  I was dressed up in my best clothes and my whole family came to see me off to my first class on my first day. To this day I remember the gift that I received which was a little address book with a traditional Russian art cover on the front. 

Today was my first day of business school. One would hope, it is my last first day of an academic institution. It was a very different feeling, but some things were still the same: I woke up early (like I have before every other first day of school), I was dressed up (though this is an anomaly), I rode the bus (actually similar to my first day of school).

The difference was that as I walked through campus, I felt older than 90% of the people I saw.  

So life is good. Exciting. New. I am overwhelmed and behind on work, but I think you are supposed to feel that way. 

Welcome to Grad School

by Helen

I want to blog. I have so many things, experiences and observations I want to share but there is simply no time. 

I am deep in orientation and I am exhausted every day. From 8am-7pm I go between workshops, lectures, break out sessions, happy hours, etc. I know it doesn't sound rough but it's very time consuming. I never realized how much down time you actually have at work and I had a very busy job! 

So I don't know when I'll get to blogging, but I really want to talk about my new study group, my class, our wonderful apartment and my boyfriend who is a rock, my continued to be hard transition with all the changes in my life (student life, living with a boyfriend life, not being able to read the news or get anything accomplished or so it seems life). I'm not AT ALL complaining, I'm loving the changes, but they are also hard on me. So I am embracing this feeling of having the ground be taken away from under my feet and clearly being suspended and held up in the air by unseen strings. 

Hopefully I won't fall. Clearly the hundreds of thousands of other people who have done this, have managed just fine. 

Going back to school in a technology era

So this going back to school thing is setting in and I have to say that the sheer amount of tools there are out there for students is quite overwhelming. 

I was happy to find that I will no longer have to aimlessly wonder around the UW campus in search of a building because there is now an iPhone application that includes a searchable map, student directory, list of classes and other stuff.  Though personally, the map is probably what I would use the most. 

Then my friend Marco tipped me off to this great list from Mashable.com of top 15 web applications for students that includes Zotero, Evernote and other useful apps. Click here for the link.   

Here are some other ones that could be useful that I found through various comments and other links: 

Doodle - Great for scheduling meetings

http://mathway.com/ - Helps you solve math problems 

http://mind42.com/ - Collaboration tool

http://tadalist.com/ - Another one of many to-do list applications that you can share and RSS feed to but is free. 

http://Creately.com/ - Online diagramming and design application  

All of the sudden I feel like an old person saying "in my days, professors didn't hold office hours via chat rooms..." but I will do my best to adapt to the new way of learning and try to incorporate online tools to it. 

In other news, I am very excited about having a Lexus Nexus subscription again! 

Lack of Glamour/Fear of the Mundane

by Helen

I think that I lately have been suffering from feeling that my life is unexciting. 

When you've been in a relationship for awhile, it is lovely and wonderful, but it's stable and regular.  There are no crazy fireworks every day.  There are some, don't get me wrong, but not like at the beginning. Additionally, I'm not working, and for better or for worse, my job provided me with lots of excitement and new experiences all the time.  As a result, I feel like I have nothing to talk about.  Sure, there are news happening in the world, but that's kind of far away and removed. We have just moved in to a new apartment and the new area that we are in is fun to explore and try out.  But that keeps me entertained for only short bits of time.  The books I read are good, but not super fulfilling (maybe I should stop reading the Sookie Stackhouse novels).  

I know that with school starting shortly, all these problems will magically go away, but I guess what worries me is that I wonder if this is what life is all about? I have everything I've wanted - a great guy, a great place, friends (though still working on that in Seattle) and at the end of the day, why isn't it just enough? Why can't I just be happy with what I have and not be constantly looking to the next thing? 

I'm really excited about our trip to Belize and Guatamala, but that's not until December.  And I'm excited about school starting.  I hope that after school is done, I will be able to find a job that is fulfilling and have a family and children that will provide me with ample adventures and perhaps hobbies that will continue to make me interesting. My biggest fear is that I either become boring or am bored with my life.  I don't want that to happen and I need to be more proactive about it as opposed to hoping that life is a constant stream of entertainment. 

I know all these people that take comfort in the mundane and sometimes I really wonder why I can't be like that too! 

Life Without Work

by Helen

I am trying to figure out my life without work.  Today is the first day and it's going well so far. 

The goal for me is not to sit on the couch the whole 2 months that I have off. Though I may let myself do more of that this week in an attempt to help my ankle heal. 

Here is my plan so far: 

1 ) Plan my meals ahead and cook interesting, yummy, healthy food for breakfast, lunch and dinner (when I'm home anyway). Buy food for the week. 

2) Do an hour of apartment cleaning/organizing a day to help prepare for moving next month.

3) Look for apartment listings online this week and compile a list of places to go see this weekend with Adam or during the week by myself. 

4) See Harry Potter on Wednesday with friends.

5) Make serious progress on A Fraction of a Whole (bookclub read)

6) Begin statistics work to prepare for b-school.

7) Start figuring out what I need to do for my career center orientation which is coming up. 

I am hoping my ankle can be fixed sooner rather then later so I can get back on a work out routine. I have a workout class M-F that I plan to take from 9:30am-10:30am but it's no good with a gimpy ankle. Also I am excited to spend time with my friends who have kids and those who have flexible work schedules. Everyone says to take advantage of this time before school starts, so that's my plan. 

It's Official!

By Helen

Today I received notification that Stanford released me from its waitlist, which means I am going to Foster Business School this fall.  I was a little upset at first that a miracle didn't happen after all, but I know that it all works out for the best.  

In better news, I am very excited about my future classmates and school. I have been getting to know them over the last couple of weeks and hanging out at a weekly happy hour and this week, we will be taking a beautiful hike as well.  I feel like I can finally be totally invested in the Foster program and that feels good.

I am also beginning to clean out my desk, RSS feeds and computer as I prepare to finish work next week. 

Thank you to all for your support through this process.  My family, friends and the MBA community all have been super awesome through all this.  Unlike some other MBA bloggers, I will not be shutting down this blog - mainly because I never considered it to be an "MBA" blog only.  This will continue to be an exchange of letters and thoughts between my sister and me.  

On I go to the next chapter of my life! 

Pre-MBA Weekly Happy Hour

by Helen

My incoming class at University of Washington is super organized - it's really refreshing and exciting.

There is a weekly happy hour for class of 2011 (this last week we went to the Red Roof).  There is also an Outdoor Club that one of the incoming classmates has formed and the first hike is this weekend to Rattlesnake Ledge. 

People are already talking about housewarming parties and other socials.  I'm sure school will be hard and all but I am looking forward to socializing. 

Foster Admit Weekend

by Helen

From Thursday night until Saturday around 2pm, I spent all my time with about 40 incoming Foster students, a bunch of current students, alumni and faculty and staff of the MBA program.

I always felt the Foster was a good fit for me from my very first interactions with the program in September of last year and all that was reaffirmed this weekend as well.

There is no point of going into the actual details of the weekend, but the things that I took away from it were the following:

1) Foster students are under no illusion that they have nothing to prove.  Everyone works hard to get the internship, job, opportunity, etc. that they want.  Nothing is taken for granted.  It was made very clear that this is not going to be Harvard or Stanford (which were given as the two schools from which students can get job interviews on just the name). I thought that bluntness was refreshing and necessary. I also appreciated a lot of the current students saying that they feel lucky that they have a job or an internship for this summer. I am normally used to hearing that from women but at UDUB, men were humble as well.  

2) Balance will be hard.  This is a trend that goes across the board it seems in all business schools, but I really walked away determined to learn to organize my day better and not slip on my priorities.  I will continue working out while going to school, see my boyfriend and make solid friends. These are my basic intentions (along with getting a job of course). 

3) "Real" networking is important.  Ever since my days in the California legislature, I have hated the word "networking."  Someone once told me that word almost implies using each other as human ladders, which is selfish and kind of useless.  What we really need to be doing is learning from people around us who do the things we are interested in doing.  Learning genuinely and with interest which is mutually beneficial to all involved.  It's not about the number of names you can drop in a conversation, but the ability to do good things for other people and their ability to help you once you've established a sincere relationship.  Foster folks did a good job of stressing that and I was glad to hear it.  No one's eyes were darting around the room when people were talking to me to see if someone better is around to talk to. That was nice. 

4) I am super excited about being a student again.  If Stanford pans out, that would be awesome.  If not, Foster will be an experience of a lifetime.